US launches probe into deadly ‘wedding party’ drone strike

Protesters loyal to the Shi'ite al-Houthi rebel group burn an effigy of a U.S. aircraft during a demonstration to protest against what they say is U.S. interference in Yemen, including drone strikes (Reuters/Khaled Abdullah) / Reuters

The Obama administration has begun an internal investigation into a drone strike in Yemen that supposedly targeted an Al-Qaeda militant, but which locals say killed 12 and injured 14 others in a wedding party.

US officials acknowledged a rare internal review of a drone
missile strike was launched following the Dec. 12 incident that
sparked outrage in Yemen and throughout the world. The
investigation of a drone strike is the first since President
Obama issued new guidelines for unmanned vehicle offensive in
May.

“Given that there are claims of civilian casualties, we are
reviewing it,” one US official speaking on condition of
anonymity told NBC News.

Asked about the Dec. 12 incident, White House National Security
Staff spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said offered only general
comments on US drone policy.

“Before we take any counterterrorism strike outside areas of
active hostilities, there must be near-certainty that no
civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can
set,” she said. “And when we believe that civilians may
have been killed, we investigate thoroughly.”

US and Yemeni officials told NBC News that the drone strike in
central Yemen came from the US Defense Department’s Joint Special
Operations Command, and not the CIA, which runs its own drone
operations in Yemen.

The targets of the strike, the officials say, were “dangerous
Al-Qaeda militants.” Purportedly among the group was Shawqi
Ali Ahmed Al-Badani, a “mid-level” operative suspected of
organizing a terror plot that led to a shutdown of numerous US
embassies around the globe in August.

Yemen security officials have stayed firm, insisting militants
were killed and that Badani escaped after being wounded. Though
another anonymous Yemeni official told NBC News the government,
upon reports of civilian deaths in the strike, authorized a local
governor of the province where the missile hit to offer fiscal
compensation - equivalent to US$110,000 in cash, in addition to
101 Kalashnikov rifles - to tribal leaders in the area.

“It is a total mess,” said the anonymous Yemen official.
“It is completely not clear who was killed. This is should be
a wake-up call to everyone involved [in drone strikes] to find
out what’s going on.”

NBC News obtained video and photos taken following the strike.
The images show dead young men who villagers said were in the
convoy heading to a wedding celebration when two Hellfire
missiles were fired by a US drone.

The materials were shot by Nasser Al-Sane, a Yemeni journalist,
and given to NBC by human rights group Reprieve. A Yemeni
official says the images were consistent with what its government
knew of the strike.

“You cannot imagine how angry people are [about the strike].
They turned a wedding into a funeral,” Al-Sane told NBC
News. Al-Sane lives near Radda, where the attack occurred.

White House and Pentagon officials were shown the video but
declined to comment. It is unknown what the US intends to do with
the investigation findings, much less whether the results will be
made public.

Human rights activist Baraa Shiban interviewed local villagers
days after the attack and said there was no sign of Badani in the
area. In fact, he says Badani was a “stranger” to the
area, and that it was unlikely he would have been invited to a
wedding of two people from neighboring villages.

“There was clearly a wedding party,” said Shiban. He
said it’s possible US officials “may have been fed the wrong
intel. They saw a group of people waiting in trucks for a convoy
and they assumed they were militants, so the made the decision to
strike.”

The 12 men who perished in the strike were shepherds and khat
farmers, ages 20 to 65, Shiban said.

Though some of the men who were killed were carrying rifles, the
local journalist Al-Sane said that’s common for a wedding party.

“In an Arab wedding, it is a tradition for people to carry
arms,” he said.

“They shoot bullets in the air as a form of expression.
That’s how they celebrate a wedding.”

Local villagers told Shiban, filing a report on the incident for
Reprieve, that the attack took place on a procession of 11 cars
and trucks carrying around 60 people going from the home of the
bride to the nearby village of the groom.

As the convoy waited in a valley for more guests, the group heard
the drone buzzing overhead, Shiban’s report attests.

“We heard a loud explosion coming from down in the
valley,” said shepherd Ahmed Mohammed Al-Shafe’ee, who lost
a son in the attack, according to Shiban’s report. “I arrived
to the site and there were bodies scattered all over the place.
The people told me that my son Aref had died.” Upon
returning to the village, Al Shafe'ee was quoted as saying,
“I saw the women of the village gathered crying and
screaming.”

Villager Sheikh Salah Al-Taisy told Shiban there was no place to
hide from the hovering drone.

“There was no way to run. It is a very remote area,” he said.
“...We live in fear day and night. Our children and women cannot
sleep.”

Shiban reported nine of the bodies were taken to Radda for a mass
burial.

The photos and videos Shiban supplied to Reprieve show burned
corpses lined up and surrounded by locals. Also shown is a
damaged truck supposedly hit in the strike; villagers protesting
US aggression with a banner that says in Arabic “America
Spills the Blood”; and locals holding fragments of a
Hellfire missile emblazoned in English with the words
“Warning -- two man lift.”

The Dec. 12 strike in Al-Baydah province occurred one week after
Al-Qaeda militants attacked the Yemen Ministry of Defense and a
military hospital, killing 52 people. The attack exacerbated
anger directed at Al-Qaeda in the country.

Yet the drone strike elicited a strong reaction against the US,
and the Yemeni Parliament passed a resolution days later calling
for a halt to all drone strikes in the country.

Shortly after the alleged wedding strike, UN human rights experts
called on the US and Yemen for transparency and accountability
over the use of drones.

Special Rapporteurs, appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human
Rights Council (UNHRC), asked the US and Yemen to reveal if they
were responsible for the air strike.

If the strike was errant, UN experts demanded transparency over
what targeting standards were used in the operation, what the
death toll exactly was and whether families of the killed are
going to receive compensation.

“If armed drones are to be used, states must adhere to
international humanitarian law, and should disclose the legal
basis for their operational responsibility and criteria for
targeting,” said Christof Heyns, UN Special Rapporteur on
extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

The US has conducted a confirmed 59 to 69 clandestine drone
strikes in Yemen in the last several years, according to the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Of those definite attacks,
between 287 and 423 people have died. Many more strikes and
deaths, both of suspected militants and of civilians, are
believed to have occurred but cannot be verified as such data is
not provided by the US government.